PERFORMANŢA ŞCOLARĂ ŞI LINGVISTICĂ A COPIILOR DE ETNIE MAGHIARĂ.

One of the main issues of language policies in the multiethnic region of North- Western Transylvania (Romania) was that of the setting of the linguistic arrangements in the compulsory education. Supported with equal opportunities arguments and by local and national political coalitions, education in native language, especially in Hungarian, flourished, both in mixed and segregated schools considering the language of instruction. The present study assesses the effects of various linguistic settings in which a teenage Hungarian from the region can learn on his/her academic performance compared with his peers, mostly of Romanian ethnic belonging, starting from two alternate hypotheses — of language gap and of oppositional cultures. Hierarchical linear modeling of the GPA in the 7^th grade of a sample of more than 3500 8^th graders from Bihor county shows a weak but systematic and significant disadvantage of Hungarian students, regardless of linguistic arrangement. Moreover, both the language disadvantage thesis and the model of oppositional culture gain support although the data are inconclusive in this regard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]